We are the Trumptidote Published on June 15, 2017

I just read a short piece from Salon.com about the five richest men in the world (all from the US) owning more wealth than 45 percent of the world’s population.

The names are well known, and three of the five are tech guys, but the underlying message, besides the gross injustice it represents, is that these men were not so much geniuses as beneficiaries of a public benefit system offering infrastructure, tax incentives and a cut-throat business culture to acquire vast wealth, unimaginable wealth, enough wealth that one of them could fund the entire public housing system in the US.

This is the American way, they say.

But there is another American way. It gets little visibility or recognition and it goes back to the founding of the country. There have always been community organizers, advocates, labor organizers and human rights advocates.

But that work always was a distraction from the “bootstraps, always better, meritocracy” narrative, so it was not good press, or good for education, or good for politics and wealth acquisition. So no surprise, we don’t hear all that much about all that history.

Our Communities Are Always Hustling

From the initial American Revolution (flawed as it was), to the abolitionist movement, to the Sand Creek Massacre, there were always two or more sides to the story, and it was often the people, particularly Native American people, African descendent people, labor leaders and women from all walks of life, who did their part to try to protect their families, their communities, their workplaces, their lands and territories.

And while doing so often cost them and many around them their lives, and while they were unsung heroes to many around them, their stories were and still are overwhelmed by the dominant narrative of America’s heroic rise as a nation. Great fortunes were accumulated and were depleted, great leaders were anointed and faded away, all the while the underlying struggle for decency, for humanity, for women’s rights and the rights of so-called minorities were swept under the rug.

The Truth Is Inconvenient

As you receive this letter, we at PDF are concluding a fiscal year with a day of decision-making over our 2017 Community Organizing Grants cycle. In that docket, one small sample of a much larger universe of on-the-ground organizing, we are making hard financial choices among a final 32 excellent organizations and communities doing their work, pushing back against injustice, defending their communities and building and fortifying their local economies.

PDF is a public foundation, disbursing resources to as many groups as we can who are pushing back against injustice and corporate greed, limited only by our financial capacity. We have no endowment, no single donor who supports us. PDF is supported by annual giving from people like you.

So as we conclude our fiscal year and make our final round of grants, we are asking you to dig deep one more time, adding your gift and your voice to the ongoing work: out of sight (and outa sight!) organizing and advocacy that bubbles and flourishes across this country.

We are asking you to be part of that never ending force in humanity that is the force for good, the “bending of the arc of humanity toward justice,” the good work of our organizing to right the wrongs and to build vibrant enduring communities, in spite of all that wealth being accumulated by those five guys.

It’s our world and our movement, and we can do better. We can honor the past and build the future, and we can do so together. A dollar or a thousand dollars goes to work to benefit the people. All the wealth and narratives cannot hide or stop that.

We are the trumptidote, and we need and hope you will ride with us as we go forward.